 Praise be to Allah Lord of the worlds We praise Allah and we seek his aid We ask for his forgiveness and we seek his protection both from the evil of ourselves and from the evil of our actions Whomever Allah guides none can misguide and whoever Allah misguides none can guide I Bear witness that there's no God but Allah alone He has no like and I testify that Muhammad sallallahu alaihi wasallam is a slave and messenger Praise be to Allah who has brought the hearts together on this auspicious day of Juma literally a day of gathering Just a as he brought it together on that primordial day of yom alaast yom al-mi thak On that day Allah asked us alasti bi rabbikum am I not your Lord and we testify bella indeed you are This gathering then is a reminder of that previous gathering as well as a reminder of the upcoming gathering on yom al qiyamah On that day when we will be gathered together once again and questioned whether we remained faithful to that primordial initial covenant This life in dunya then is a journey It has a departure point and a destination That departure point like we said is yom al-mi thak is the day of the covenant when we said alasti bi rabbikum and It was on that day from which we departed as souls standing before our Lord and We passed through through his dunya, and then we pass away and Our arrival point after this dunya our arrival point after this journey of dunya It is the day of resurrection when we again stand before our Lord and Answer for our deeds Just like on the first day. We were asked elasti bi rabbikum The angels will ask us after we pass away Mandra book And so you see there's a parallel Between the question you're asked before your life and the question you're asked after your death the first question Am I not your Lord and then after you die who is your Lord? And so this life is but is about acknowledging lordship But what you'll notice if you think about this a little bit more in ponder what Allah is telling us is that The departure point and the destination are really the same You leave from your Lord you leave from being before your Lord being being before Allah and you arrive Being being before Allah as well because you're only questioned before Allah. So the departure point and the destination are the same Who is your Lord and am I not your Lord? And so to understand this life then is to understand that we are Leaving a place and then coming back to it and that the purpose and meaning of this life then it wreck Requires that we understand this this framework of life And so when we read about what Allah says about the day of covenant he says We are So Allah says and when your Lord took from the children of Adam He took from their loins their descendants meaning he brought out to their children and He stood them in witness upon their own souls, am I not your Lord? They said, indeed, so that on the day of resurrection, they cannot say they were unknowing of this. This is what Allah is telling us. That covenant is our guarantee on Yom Muqiyamah. Allah is telling us that there was a plane of existence before this life. This is not our first life. And it was on that day where Allah stood us in witness. Ash-hadahum. He made them stand in witness. So what does it mean to witness? Well, to witness is to see something. To see something with your own eyes. To see something. To see and visualize something that's real. And so what Allah is telling us is, Ash-hadahum, Allah showed us something of himself. He showed us something of his. Rububiya, of his Lordship. And it was that self-manifestation of Allah that is the basis of our testimony. Like us going before a judge. And the judge, the judge, capital J, asked us, Am I not your Lord? And we took the stand as in court. And acknowledged, indeed we bear witness that you are Allah. Because we had witnessed something of that divine Lordship. And so we were acknowledging that. Allah says, Say the Ruh, the Spirit, comes from my Lord's affair. And so this is the memory of the covenant. This memory of Allah's Lordship, which in this life is stamped and imprinted on our souls. And it's something that we call fitrah. Allah says, Allah says, The primordial nature from which Allah formed people. There is no replacing Allah's creation. In other words, every human being has embedded in their souls a recognition of the Creator. And that's why iman feels so natural to us. And yet, even though there's a part of ourselves that iman feels natural, it is also true that at the surface of our consciousness, in the hustle and the bustle of dunya, that this memory often doesn't stick. That it fades into the backdrop of our minds. And for some people, it becomes a part of ourselves that we are entirely disconnected from. A state in which we are forgetful of some part of our own self. Now, this forgetfulness then, is the very meaning of tribulation in this world. It lies at the core of every experience of affliction, every experience of grief, of difficulty, of trial. And this is because to forget the covenant means to forget a part of ourselves, to be alienated and estranged from a part of ourselves. Like someone who goes out into the wilderness and doesn't have a tent or food or supplies and doesn't have any survival skills. What's he going to do? The dunya becomes a wilderness. It becomes a jungle full of beasts and animals, full of danger and disease. And the soul not knowing what to do in this wilderness, it cries out, why am I here? Where am I going? Like Allah reminds us, the anatab haboon. So where are you going? And Allah says, the likeness of these people, it says though in Surat al-Baqarah, it says the likeness of these people, it's like they're standing in darkness, standing in darkness, fearful. And then a bolt of lightning strikes, making them put their fingers in their ears, fearful of the thunder and afraid for their lives. And then the lightning, the lightning illuminates comes with a flash. It illuminates a small patch of ground in front of them and so they walk forward. But as soon as the light comes, it vanishes. And then they're back in the darkness like they initially were. This is the darkness of not having a light in this world. This is darkness that we experience as an emptiness in the soul. An emptiness that comes from being alienated from our own souls, being alienated from the memory of the Covenant and therefore also being alienated from that witness of the divine beauty of the divine Lordship. And the proof of this emptiness, you see when you observe how people behave that people are anxious, you're looking for something to give their life meaning and purpose. And that's why you have people who turn towards alcohol, drugs, and partying. You're seeking the delight, that initial delight that they all have a memory of, the delight of seeing their Lord on the day of the Covenant. And for some people, their destructive ways aren't that bad. All they want is dunya. They want to live in a fancy home. They want to be promoted above their peers in the office. They want their neighbors, their colleagues, and their friends all to look up to them. But this is all a delusion. Zuyina l-nasa, khubbu shahawati minal nisa'i wal baneen wa l-kanatira l-mukantarati minal zahabi wal fidda wa l-khailin musawamati wal an'ami wal harf. Allah says it has been made alluring for people love of appetites, love of desires. Where are they? Women, children, treasures of gold and silver, racy steeds or today we could say fast cars, cattle and plantations. All of these things of the dunya, you're seeking to fill a hole in yourself. Just fill an emptiness in yourself. And yet none of it is filling. For how can the finite ever fill an empty vessel that was meant to contain the infinite? Allah says, ahakumut takathur. Accumulating many things will destroy you. Destroy you because no matter the quantity of the finite it can never fulfill that infinite gap, that infinite emptiness. Hatta azrtu almakabir kalla sofa ta'alamoon until you visit the graves. Verily then you will know. Because when you visit the graves you remember Allah because you remember death. And when you remember Allah you remember the one. Because if you seek the many that will destroy you but if you seek the one, Allah, who is the infinite that is what will save you. And so what then fills this emptiness? What then returns this home from our alienation in the world? For this we go back to our ayah, the ayah that we began with. Wa idhakhadah rabbuka min bani Adam and when your Lord took from the children of Adam. Now again we go back to this ayah and we examine this and grammatically you see that the verse begins with idh, when. And the grammarians will tell you when you have idh you need to have verb before it in this case. Remember when. Uddhkuru idhakhadah rabbuka min bani Adam Remember when your Lord took from the children of Adam. In other words, make zikr of it. Remember this moment, remember this day that you all have imprinted inside of you. Allah says, Uddhkuru allaha idhannisit Remember Allah when you forget. This remembrance of Allah, zikr Allah is not of something outside of ourselves. Zikr Allah, what it really means is to recall the embedded and intrinsic memory of that covenant, of that specific manifestation of Allah to his slaves on that day as the Lord. And all recognition of Allah thereafter is remembrance of that first day. Allah tells us, ala bidhikr Allahi tatma innu l-kulub Indeed, only in the remembrance of Allah do the hearts find serenity. Wa man ya'ashu an dhikr al-rahmani n'uqiyyiddahu shaytanan fahu'alahu qareen And whoever is blind and neglectful of remembering the all-merciful we assign to him a demon, a shaytan comes for him a constant companion. And so Allah is telling us, it's one or the other either you are in dhikr Allah and that's going to bequeath you calmness and serenity or you're not in dhikr. And if you're not in dhikr you'll find yourself in agitation always fidgeting about in life being poked and prodded by a shaytan. And so this then is the archetype of the life of someone who does not have any dhikr in their hearts but someone who is completely at loss and disconnected from their Lord. To live in darkness, away from home alienated from their own selves hopelessly seeking to fill their emptiness with the things of this world in constant agitation being poked and prodded by a demon, by a shaytan. And this is the result of having no dhikr and therefore what is incumbent on us is if we recognize this own existential agitation in ourselves its own existential alienation in ourselves is to go back to are we truly making dhikr or not Out of all the times of the year we find ourselves in the month of Ramadan Ramadan is the best time for dhikr because as we all know it's a month of fasting it's a month of prayer it's a month of reciting dhikr on and Allah tells us in dhikr on that each of these fasting prayer and reading dhikr on all of these are naturally geared towards dhikr Allah swears by the dhikr of dhikr on Surah Sa'd beginning with Sa'd or Quran i dhikr Sa'd I swear by the Quran full of remembrance I swear by the Quran full of remembrance and Allah also says wa aklimu salata dhikr established the prayer for my remembrance and so what this means is what's the purpose of all the extra Quran that we're reading in this month is remembrance what's the purpose of spending half the night or the entirety of the night standing up in prayer the purpose is remembrance it's dhikr and then there's fasting and what fasting does is it leaves our stomachs empty and that emptiness of the stomach where you could extend to the emptiness of the material is a necessary prerequisite for real dhikr it's a requisite for dhikr to penetrate beyond the tongues and to enter into the heart not just remain on the tongue this is because different limbs and organs of the human being the eyes, the ears the tongue, the hands, the feet the stomach and the privus those seven these are passageways into the soul they're passageways into the heart they're entry points and if they're stuffed with dunya they become clogged and then the life-giving nutrients of dhikr because dhikr is the sustenance of the soul the life-giving nutrients can't reach the heart and so this becomes like a physical heart when you overeat you can clog the arteries of your heart and where does that lead to? a heart attack, a stroke and likewise then the spiritual heart if it's devoid if it's being filled with food if you're overeating then the arteries of the spiritual heart the limbs in other words become clogged and dhikr can't penetrate in it will have no effect on the heart it will only remain on the tongue and in indication of this the prophet sallallahu alayhi wa sallam said this is the key then to being transformed by Ramadan that you let the fasting in the day prepare you for the dhikr in the night in your qiyam and in your qira when you stand in prayer and when you recite the Qur'an and so don't eat a huge heavy meal for iftar because it defeats the heart purpose of the fast it's like getting your paycheck at the end of the month as you're leaving the office throwing it in trash it wastes everything that you've been doing and when you come to the dhikr of the night let that dhikr of the night be dhikr of the heart and not just a dhikr of the tongue people always ask I don't know what dhikr to make in the morning or evening I don't know what to say and yet dhikr isn't about saying isn't about words dhikr is about connecting to Allah and so if you don't know what to do just sit down for five minutes in the morning or in the evening and complain to Allah that you don't even know the words to express to him you don't even know what to ask of him you don't know even how to beg of him for your needs and that is dhikr then because even in that, even if you don't know the words you're making dhikr of Allah you're talking to Allah, you're speaking with Allah you're remembering Allah and lastly then the greatest dhikr of Allah of all is the Quran and one of the names of the Quran is adhikr so when you listen to the Quran in a prayer and you read it at home open your eyes, open your ears open your heart to its meaning and to the reality that Allah is speaking to you Allah is present before you addressing you from eternity قد أفلح المؤمنون الذين هم عن صلاة مخاشعون successful are the believers triumphant are the believers when their prayers tremble out of reverence they stand before Allah in the prayer like a criminal standing before a judge, they're doing sentencing begging for a pardon or like someone who's broken their covenant with their beloved they've broken their promise that they made to the one they loved and so the beloved is turning away from them that is khushu, that is the dhikr of the Quran and the dhikr of the prayer Allah says in His Noble Kitab we've all made a good effort and we don't have to worry about our souls Allah has made the Quran to be our hearts, our hearts and we've given it to Allah the night and the day Allah has preserved this Muhammadic nation in all its countries as if you're on all things Qadir and Ijtaba Jadir the prophet said I'm the most merciful of my nation Abu Bakr and I'm the most generous of them in the religion of Allah, Omar Fatima as-sein O wipe your age I'm the most kinder than this Dear Quran I will remember Allah he will remember you ... to him and he will increase you.